Implicitely abstracted type

[Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert@mlstate.com>]

Yesterday I encountered an ocaml error that, if I can now make some 
sense out of it -- it's not properly speaking a bug -- was quite 
confusing at first and took me  some time to figure out.

What happens is that a sum-type defined in a module can implicitely be 
turned into abstract because of its inner contents.

Here is a small example:
------
module F (A : sig type a end) = struct
  type a = A.a
  type t = X of A.a
end

(* if A.a is abstract, the type F.t is made abstract *)
module A = F (struct type a end)
(*
  The inferred interface is:
  module A : sig type a type t end

  I figure ocaml can't guess what to put in the interface for the 
definition of t,
  but maybe an error would be better than silently turning it into 
abstract ?
*)

(* it gets confusing in the following use case (and of course if type t
   has many cases and you just added an abstract type somewhere deep) *)
let _ = A.X (assert false)
  (* the constructor A.X is not found *)

(* if t is defined as "X of a" instead of "X of A.a", no problem arises *)
------

I don't know exactly what to do with it, but maybe it should be made an 
error ? (types escaping their scope usually are)

Louis

-- 
Louis Gesbert
R & D @ MLstate
15, rue Berlier
75013 Paris